Neighborhood JAM — Restaurant in Norman

5/7/19 HORRIBLE!!! Hands down, today was the WORST experience I've ever had at a Hal Smith Group restaurant! When seating is the only thing that is positive about a dinning experience, improvements need to be made! The restaurant was GROSSLY understaffed today and therefore led to horrible service. FIVE different servers and a manager serviced our table of 2. From ordering a carafe of mimosas - being very specific regarding large goblets and out comes flutes that might be better referred to as thimbles - to overall service, frustration instead of enjoyment was the only experience felt today. Ordering food, the breakfast potatoes looked like they were made yesterday and reburnt 3-4 times, the omelet tasted like someone dumped a salt shaker in it it was so salty, and one order came out with hash browns when it was clearly ordered with breakfast potatoes. Consistenly, I go to a Hal Smith Group restaurant relying on the service equaling or exceeding the quality of food provided at a premium price. Today, $57 later, I left almost the entire plate of food ordered (as noted in the picture) with the restaurant grossly missing on every cylinder - lack of service and attention to detail, horrible food quality, and definitely not meeting reasonable customer expectations ... or even coming close. Sadly, my review, based on combined experiences at this restaurant, is save your money and go someplace else that values QUALITY over quantity. I definitely will in the future and skip the frustration and annoyance that this restaurant causes on almost every occasion.

HIT OR MISS AT MOST!!! I predominantly eat at Hal Smith Group restaurants because one can usually count on consistent and impeccable service and food. This restaurant misses that mark almost every time I go to it - new management might be a key to improvement! Today, for example, there was a 45 minute wait that turned into 1 hour 15 minutes. With a total of 10 tables on the patio, every single one of them were grouped into large toppers of 2 tables put together. This is fine if you have large groups sitting at them but every single grouping had 3 people sitting at them while over 30 or so people were waiting over an hour to eat. Great management would've immediately pulled all 5 of those large tops apart and immediately had 5 additionally tables of 4 for at least 5 grouping of patrons to sit at. Another example is a server broke a full cup of coffee and full creamer on the patio close to where I was standing - splattering all over. The mixed coffee and creamer just sat there on the floor for at least 10-15 minutes while people walked through it until I pointed out to someone that it might need to be moped up. You'd think a competent manager would be making thorough rounds to ensure the restaurant was performing impeccably in every aspect. When paying premiums prices for breakfast, yes, I do expect premium service in a premium environment. Not one that lets liquids just lay on the floor for people to stomp through or runs as inefficiently as this one does. This restaurant desperately needs to step it up or notch or I recommend stepping...

Let's start with the good:

The bacon was very good. It's always the first thing I eat!

The little red bell peppers were very tasty. I found myself poking around on my husbands plate looking for more.

The diced potatoes were very good. Crispy skin.

The butter for the toast was very tasty and easy to spread.

Now the not so good:

First, the waiter seemed in a rush from the beginning and had an undertone of sarcasm? that I detected but wasn't sure of until the very end of the meal when I confirmed it. It was almost passive aggressive in a very subtle way. We had told the waiter we would possibly order another item later on if our meal wasn't enough. When he re-appeared later, he had the check ready. We told him we would like to get more food and he was ok with that but launched into a speech about how most people are in a hurry so he thought we might be in a rush.(Not sure why you would think that if we made no indications and weren't asked that? )But No problem we told him, but as my husband and I simply discussed how we were going to split the order, he launched into the different types, talking over us and making it hard for us to communicate, and then he finally said I CAN GET YOU A MENU - all we needed was another 3 or 4 seconds to decide between the two of us but he was extremely rushed and at that point I politely declined and said we were no longer interested in ordering more. You could feel his anxious hurry as he stood there talking over us. It was.... unsettling.

The price: The bill was 50 dollars for two people, including 1 mimosa. Yikes.

The mimosa: Tasted bitter to me, but other people might like it.

The eggs: Both my scrambled eggs and my husbands were runny. At first I thought it was only a little, but as I ate them and got further down I realized just how much the eggs really needed more time on the skillet. They were too runny for me.

The toast: The bread used for the toast was not the usual bread most places use, it almost kind of tasted like some kind of sourdough(?)bread. It had a strange taste to it that I didn't like. It was firm, not hard but firm enough to not be the usual soft toast that one usually associates with breakfast.

Space: This place was VERY crowded, and we weren't able to be seated at a table with an empty table between ours, meaning we had people on both sides of us while other tables were fortunate enough to be spaced out. Not a big deal pre-covid times, but these days one appreciates a little bit of space in crowded places, especially when you have been on an oxygen machine due to covid before. I do understand that we took the chance by choice, and that is on us and I am ok with that. But it is worth mentioning that we would have preferred a separated table like the rest.

The price alone makes it difficult to foresee coming back simply because times are tough and that is a lot of money...

Let me start by saying my wife and I have been going here most weekends for the last year. We love this place. With that said, over the last two months the service and quality has seemed to be slipping. The food is always delicious, but little things have started to creep in that have consistently left a bad taste in our mouth.

On each of our last 5 visits, we have had something wrong with our order. This time, I wasn't sure about trying the hot jam biscuit "nasty" (with gravy), so our server said they would put it on the side for me so I could try it. When it got to the table, it wasn't on the side, and I was not a fan of the combination of jam and gravy. They took the $2 gravy charge off, but I couldn't eat the biscuit, bacon, or egg either since they all had the jam and gravy.

On our previous visit we ordered cocktails at 7:55 to be put in at 8:00 (by Oklahoma law they can't sell alcohol before 8) when our server first greeted us, but they didn't come out until we were nearly finished with our food and ready to pay at around 8:35.

On a visit before that, we ordered iced drinks that came out hot. We've also been given incorrect side items.

Each of these occasions, but particularly the drinks, could have been remedied by a visit from our server when these items come out. With the exception of today, we didn't see our server in time for these to be corrected. They always offer to fix it, but if we're nearly finished and ready to pay and leave by the time the issue is noticed and that offer is made, it doesn't help.

Yet again, I must clarify that I want this place here, and I want you to try it and I hope you have an incredible experience. I am writing this so that these little things might be able to be remedied. NJ has a neighbor on the other end of the block that went downhill, and it started with little things like this. I don't want them to turn out the same way. The little things matter. I want Neighborhood Jam to be the undeniable best place to get...